arXiv subjects

Zheng-Yu Weng

Publications and source records attributed to Zheng-Yu Weng.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Momentum-Selective Two-Component Excitations in Electron-Doped Mott Insulators

Experimental studies reveal a striking asymmetry in low-energy single-particle excitations between electron- and hole-doped cuprates. Electron-doped cuprates display a nontrivial dichotomy: Fermi-liquid-like behavior (suggesting weaker electronic correlations) coexists with correlation-driven features typical of hole-doped systems. This dual nature challenges a unified description within a doped Mott insulator framework. The present work addresses this issue by establishing that the ground-state wave function of the $t$-$t'$-$J$ model generically possesses a two-component structure, comprising a coherent quasiparticle and an incoherent composite component. The kinetic energy arises from both the intrinsic propagation of the coherent quasiparticle and the resonance between these components. Using variational Monte Carlo at the level of a single hole, we show that for hole doping ($t'<0$), this resonance between components dominates and concentrates in the nodal region at low energies. This emergent propagation induced by resonance can be physically interpreted as originating from the recombination of fractionalized degrees of freedom, which drives various phenomena associated with strong correlations. Conversely, for electron doping ($t'>0$), the coherent quasiparticle propagation, which exhibits conventional properties of a Fermi liquid, is selectively enhanced in the antinodal region at low energies. This produces a separation in momentum space for systems with electron doping: the antinodal spectral weight at low energies is governed by the coherent quasiparticle, fundamentally differing from the nodal region, which remains dominated by the incoherent composite component. Motivated by such a structure and guided by experimental observations, we propose a phenomenological Green's function at finite doping, yielding spectral features consistent with experiments.

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arXiv2026

Competing and Intertwined Orders in Boson-Doped Mott Antiferromagnets

Inspired by the recent experimental advances in cold atom quantum simulators, we explore the experimentally implemented bosonic $t$-$t'$-$J$ model on the square lattice using large-scale density matrix renormalization group simulations. By tuning the doping level $δ$ and hopping ratio $t'/t$, we uncover six distinct quantum phases, several of which go far beyond the conventional paradigm of phase-coherent superfluidity (SF) expected for bosonic systems. In particular, in the presence of antiferromagnetic (AFM) order, doped holes are tightly bound into pairs, giving rise to a pair density wave (PDW) phase at low doping and small $|t'/t|$, which is suppressed on the $t'<0$ side, resulting in a disordered PDW state that lacks coherence of either individual bosons or pairs. Upon further doping, bosons can regain phase coherence and form a SF* state, characterized by condensation at emergent incommensurate momenta concurrent with an incommensurate magnetic order. On the $t'>0$ side, the sign-induced kinetic frustration inherently disfavors local AFM correlations, leading to a phase separation in which doped holes cluster into ferromagnetic (FM) domains spatially separated by undoped AFM regions. Upon further doping, this inhomogeneous state evolves into a uniform SF + $xy$-FM phase. Finally, we propose a concrete experimental scheme to realize both signs of $t'/t$ in Rydberg tweezer arrays, with an explicit mapping between model parameters and experimentally accessible regimes. Our results reveal competing and intertwined orders in doped antiferromagnets, which are relevant to central issues in high-$T_c$ superconductivity, reflecting the frustrated interplay between doped holes and spin background.

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arXiv2026

Minimal loop currents in doped Mott insulators

For the $t$-$J$ model, variational wave functions can generally be constructed based on an accurate description of antiferromagnetism (AFM) at half-filling and an exact phase-string sign structure under doping. The single-hole-doped and two-hole-doped states, as determined by variational Monte Carlo (VMC) simulations, display sharply contrasting behaviors. The single-hole state constitutes a ``cat state'' that resonates strongly between a quasiparticle component and a local loop-current component, with approximately equal weights. In the ground state, the quasiparticle spectral weight $Z_{\mathbf{k}}$ peaks at momenta $\mathbf{k}_0 \equiv (\pm\fracπ{2},\pm\fracπ{2})$. The total-energy dispersion versus $\mathbf{k}$ agrees remarkably well with the Green function Monte Carlo results. However, Landau's one-to-one correspondence hypothesis for quasiparticles breaks down here with the incoherent component exhibiting intrinsic magnetization originating from a minimal $2\times2$ loop current that forms a $4\times4$ pattern on the square lattice--a finding in excellent agreement with density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations. In the two-hole ground state, a new pairing mechanism is revealed: the two holes are automatically fused into a tightly bound object consisting of an incoherent $d_{xy}$ pairing along the diagonal direction by compensating the local loop currents. This hole pair is again a ``cat state'' that resonates strongly between the incoherent $d_{xy}$ and a coherent $d_{x^2-y^2}$ Cooper channel to gain substantial hopping energy. Its size extends over an area of about $4\times 4$ lattice spacings, much smaller than the divergent AFM correlation length, implying that it should survive as a minimal superconducting building block even in the dilute doping regime. Experimental implications and the generalization to the finite-doping case are briefly addressed.

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arXiv2025

Intrinsic phase fluctuation and superfluid density in doped Mott insulators

The doping dependence of the superfluid density $ρ_{\text{s}}$ exhibits distinct behaviors in the underdoping and overdoping regimes of the cuprate, while the superconducting (SC) transition temperature $T_c$ generally scales with $ρ_{\text{s}}$. In this paper, we present a unified understanding of the superconducting transition temperature $T_c$ and $ρ_{\text{s}}$ across the entire doping range by incorporating the underlying mutual Chern-Simons gauge structure that couples the spin and charge degrees of freedom in the doped Mott insulator. Within this framework, the SC phase fluctuations are deeply intertwined with the spin dynamics, such that thermally excited neutral spins determine $T_c$, while quantum spin excitations effectively reduce the superfluid density at zero temperature. As a result, a Uemura-like scaling of $T_c$ vs. $ρ_{\text{s}}$ in the underdoped regime naturally emerges, while the suppression of both $T_c$ and $ρ_{\text{s}}$ at overdoping is attributed to a drastic reduction of antiferromagnetic spin correlations.

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arXiv2025

Quantum-interference-induced pairing in bosonic doped antiferromagnets

The pairing mechanism in doped antiferromagnets is essential for understanding high-temperature superconductivity. In this work, we investigate the pairing mechanism in bosonic doped antiferromagnets via large-scale density matrix renormalization group calculations of the bosonic $t$-$J$ model. We discover a pair density wave (PDW) coexists with the antiferromagnetic (AFM) order forming a ``supersolid'' at small doping. The pairing is attributed to a hidden many-body Berry phase that introduces the sole ``sign problem'' into this bosonic model and imposes quantum phase frustration to the spin-charge interference pattern. Only via tightly pairing of doped holes, can such frustration be most effectively erased in an AFM background. By contrast, the pairing vanishes as the Berry phase is trivialized in the ferromagnetic condensate at larger doping or switched off into the Bose-Hubbard model at large $U$. The present pairing mechanism -- distinct from the conventional mechanisms based on Fermi surface instabilities -- may provide a different perspective and new insights for understanding the complex nature of doped Mott insulators and is promising to be probed on qudit-based quantum simulators such as ultracold Rydberg atom arrays.

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arXiv2025

Terahertz nonlinear response in cuprate superconductors and the Higgs field in doped Mott insulators

A puzzling phenomenon has been recently revealed in terahertz nonlinear optical response experiments: A third harmonic generation (THG) signal, identified only in the superconducting (SC) phase in a conventional BCS superconductor, is found to persist into a wide pseudogap regime in the underdoped cuprate, accompanied by a $π$ phase shift in the THG signal across the SC transition. In this paper, we offer a consistent understanding of such an unconventional phenomenon based on an emergent Higgs mode of the condensed holons in the doped Mott insulator. Specifically, in the lower pseudogap phase (LPP) where, although the holons still remain Bose condensed, the SC phase coherence gets disordered by excited spinons, which induce vortex-like responses from the holon condensate. By coupling to such internal fluctuations described by a mutual Chern-Simons gauge theory, we show that an external electromagnetic field can indeed produce the optical THG response in both the SC and LPP states, which are distinguished by a $π$ phase shift with a substantial suppression of the THG signal in the latter regime at higher temperatures.

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arXiv2025

Electric transport in doped Mott insulators dictated by a non-Ioffe-Larkin composition rule and spinons

The electric resistivity is examined in the constrained Hilbert space of a doped Mott insulator, which is dictated by a non-Ioffe-Larkin composition rule due to the underlying mutual Chern-Simons topological gauge structure. In the low-temperature pseudogap phase, where holons remain condensed while spinons proliferate, the charge transport is governed by a chiral spinon excitation, comprising a bosonic spin-$1/2$ at the core of a supercurrent vortex. It leads to a vanishing resistivity with the ``confinement'' of the spinons in the superconducting phase but a low-$T$ divergence of the resistivity once the spinon confinement is disrupted by external magnetic fields. In the latter, the chiral spinons will generate a Hall number $n_H =$ doping concentration $ δ$ and a Nernst effect to signal an underlying long-range entanglement between the charge and spin degrees of freedom. Their presence is further reflected in thermodynamic quantities such as specific heat and spin susceptibility. Finally, in the high-temperature spin-disordered phase, it is shown that the holons exhibit a linear-$T$ resistivity by scattering with the spinons acting as free local moments, which generate randomized gauge fluxes as perceived by the charge degree of freedom.

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arXiv2025

Revealing quantum phase string effect in doped Mott-insulator: a tensor network state approach

We apply the fermionic tensor network (TN) state method to understand the strongly correlated nature in a doped Mott insulator. We conduct a comparative study of the $σt$-$J$ model, in which the no-double-occupancy constraint remains unchanged but the quantum phase string effect associated with doped holes is precisely switched off. Thus, the ground state of the $σt$-$J$ model can serve as a well-controlled reference state of the standard $t$-$J$ model. In the absence of phase string, the spin long-range antiferromagnetic (AFM) order is found to be essentially decoupled from the doped holes, and the latter contribute to a Fermi-liquid-like compressibility and a coherent single-particle propagation with a markedly reduced pairing tendency. In contrast, our TN calculations of the $t$-$J$ model indicate that the AFM order decreases much faster with doping and the single-particle propagation of doped holes gets substantially suppressed, concurrently with a much stronger charge compressibility at small doping and a significantly amplified Cooper pairing tendencies. These findings demonstrate that quantum many-body interference from phase strings plays a pivotal role in the $t$-$J$ model, mediating long-range entanglement between spin and charge degrees of freedom.

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arXiv2024

Thermal Hall Effect and Neutral Spinons in a Doped Mott Insulator

In the pseudogap phase of the cuprate, a thermal Hall response of neutral objects has been recently detected experimentally, which continuously persists into the antiferromagnetic insulating phase. In this work, we study the transport properties of neutral spinons as the elementary excitation of a doped Mott insulator, which is governed by a mutual Chern-Simons topological gauge structure. We show that such a chiral spinon as a composite of an $S=1/2$ spin sitting at the core of a supercurrent vortex, can contribute to the thermal Hall effect, thermopower, and Hall effect due to its intrinsic transverse (cyclotron) motion under internal fictitious fluxes. In particular, the magnitudes of the transport coefficients are phenomenologically determined by two basic parameters: the doping concentration and $T_c$, quantitatively consistent with the experimental measurements including the signs and qualitative temperature and magnetic field dependence. Combined with the predictions of the spinon longitudinal transport properties, including the Nernst and spin Hall effects, a phenomenological description of the pseudogap phase is established as characterized by the neutral spinon excitations, which eventually become "confined" with an intrinsic superconducting transition at $T_c$. Finally, within this theoretical framework, the "order to order" phase transition between the superconducting and antiferromagnetic insulating phases are briefly discussed, with the thermal Hall monotonically increasing into the latter.

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arXiv2024

Sign structure of the $t$-$t^\prime$-$J$ model and its physical consequences

Understanding the doped Mott insulator is a central challenge in condensed matter physics. In this work, we first explicitly identify a new sign structure in the $t$-$t'$-$J$ model on the square lattice that replaces the conventional Fermi statistics for weakly interacting electrons. Then we show that the singular, i.e., the phase-string part of the sign structure in the partition function can be precisely turned off in a modified model. The density matrix renormalization group method is then employed to study these two models comparatively on finite-size systems, which is designed to unveil the consequences of the phase-string component. We find that the hole pairing is present not only in the quasi-long-range superconducting phase but also in the stripe phase of the $t$-$t'$-$J$ model. However, once the phase-string is switched off, both the superconducting and stripe orders together with the underlying hole pairing disappear. The corresponding ground state reduces to a trivial Fermi-liquid-like state with small hole Fermi pockets that is decoupled from the antiferromagnetic spin background. It is in sharp contrast to the original $t$-$t'$-$J$ model where large Fermi surfaces can be restored in the stripe phase found at $t'/t<0$ or the superconducting phase at $t'/t>0$ in the six-leg ladder calculation. Our study clearly demonstrates that the strong correlation effect in doped Mott insulator should be mainly attributed to the long-range quantum entanglement between the spin and charge, which is, non-perturbatively, beyond a simple spin-charge separation under the no double occupancy constraint.

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arXiv2024

Composite Structure of Single-Particle Spectral Function in Lightly-Doped Mott Insulators

The internal structure of doped holes in the Mott insulator may provide important insight into the physics of doped cuprates. Its observability via a single-particle probe by scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and angle-resolved photo-emission spectroscopy (ARPES) is explored in this paper. Specifically we study the single-particle spectral function based on a two-hole variational ground state wavefunction [Phys. Rev. X 12, 011062 (2022)] in the $t$-$J$ model. The latter as a strongly correlated state possesses a dichotomy of $d$-wave Cooper pairing and $s$-wave ``twisted'' hole pairing. This pairing structure will give rise to two branches of local spectral function at finite energies. The low-lying one corresponds to a nodal-like quasiparticle excitation and the higher branch is associated with the pair breaking of ``twisted'' quasiparticles, with the threshold energy resembling a pseudogap, which is consistent with the recent STS observation. It can be further extended into energy spectra in momentum space measurable by ARPES, where the low-energy dispersion is also shown to agree well with the Quantum Monte Carlo numerical result for a single hole. It implies that the dominant pairing force arises from the ``twisted'' holes showing up in the high-energy branch. The effect of the next nearest neighbor hopping integral $t'$ is also examined, which shows interesting distinction between $t'/t > 0$ and $t'/t \leq 0$ with a dramatic shift of the low-lying excitation from the nodal region to the antinodal region, but with the high-energy branch remaining insensitive to $t'$. Finally, a possible ``orthogonality catastrophe'' effect, namely, a ``dark matter'' component in the strongly correlated wavefunction that cannot be directly detected by the single-electron spectroscopy, is briefly discussed.

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arXiv2024

Strong Pairing Originated from an Emergent $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Berry Phase in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$

The recent discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ offers a fresh platform for exploring unconventional pairing mechanisms. Starting with the basic argument that the electrons in $d_{z^2}$ orbitals nearly form local moments, we examine the effect of the Hubbard interaction $U$ on the binding strength of Cooper pairs based on a single-orbital bilayer model with intralayer hopping $t_{\|}$ and interlayer super-exchange $J_{\perp}$. By extensive density matrix renormalization group calculations, we observe a remarkable enhancement in binding energy as much as $10$-$20$ times larger with $U/t_\|$ increasing from $0$ to $12$ at $J_{\perp}/t_\|\sim 1$. We demonstrate that such a substantial enhancement stems from a kinetic-energy-driven mechanism. Specifically, a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Berry phase will emerge at large $U$ due to the Hilbert space restriction (Mottness), which strongly suppresses the mobility of single particle propagation as compared to $U=0$. However, the kinetic energy of the electrons (holes) can be greatly restored by forming an interlayer spin-singlet pairing, which naturally results in a superconducting state even for relatively small $J_\perp$. An effective hard-core bosonic model is further proposed to estimate the superconducting transition temperature at the mean-field level.

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arXiv2024

Variational Monte Carlo Study of the Doped $t$-$J$ Model on Honeycomb Lattice

The ground state of the bipartite $t$-$J$ model must satisfy a specific sign structure, based on which the single-hole and two-hole ground state $Ans\ddot{a}tze$ on honeycomb lattice are constructed and studied by a variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method. The VMC results are in good agreement with the exact diagonalization (ED) calculation. For the single-hole case, the degenerate ground states are characterized by quantum numbers of a spin-1/2 and an orbital angular momentum $L_z=\pm 2$. The latter is associated with the emergent chiral spin/hole currents mutually surrounding the hole/spin-1/2 as a composite object or ``twisted hole''. A vanishing quasiparticle spectral weight is shown in the large-sample limit. In the two-hole ground state, the holes form a spin-singlet pairing with $d$+$id$ symmetry in the Cooper channel, but are of $s$-wave symmetry as a tightly bound pair of the ``twisted holes''. Such a pairing mechanism of dichotomy can be attributed to eliminating the local spin currents which has nothing to do with the long-range antiferromagnetic correlation. Superconducting ground state at finite doping is briefly discussed in terms of the tightly bound hole pairs as the building blocks.

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arXiv2024

Crossover from Fermi Arc to Full Fermi Surface

The Fermi surface as a contour of the gapless quasiparticle excitation in momentum space is studied based on a mean-field theory of the doped Mott insulator, where the underlying pseudogap phase is characterized by a two-component resonating-valence-bond (RVB) order that vanishes in the overdoping at $δ>δ^*$. Here the quasiparticle emerges as a ``collective'' mode and a Fermi arc is naturally present in the pseudogap regime, while a full Fermi surface is recovered at $δ>δ^*$. The area enclosed by the gapless quasiparticle contour still satisfies the Luttinger volume in both cases, and the ``Fermi arc'' at $δ<δ^*$ is actually due to a significant reduction of the spectral weight caused by a quasiparticle fractionalization in the antinodal region. The endpoints of the Fermi arcs exhibit enhanced density of states or ``hotspots'', which can further give rise to a charge-density-wave-like quasiparticle interference pattern. At the critical doping $δ^*$, the fractionalized spin excitations become gapless and incoherent which is signaled by a divergent specific heat. At $δ>δ^*$, the quasiparticle excitation restores the coherence over the full Fermi surface, but the fractionalization still persists at a higher energy/temperature which may be responsible for a strange metal behavior. Different mechanisms for the Fermi arc and experimental comparisons are briefly discussed.

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arXiv2023

Hourglass-Like Spin Excitation in a Doped Mott Insulator

We examine the dynamical magnetic response in a two-component resonating-valence-bond (RVB) description of the doped Mott insulator. The half-filled antiferromagnetic phase described by the Schwinger-boson mean-field theory will evolve into a bosonic-RVB state in the superconducting phase upon doping, where the doped holes introduce another fermionic itinerant spinon which forms a BCS-like RVB order. The spin excitations are thus composed of a resonance-like mode from the former and a weak dispersive mode from the itinerant component at the mean-field level. These two-component spinons are shown to give rise to an hourglass-like spin excitation at the RPA level via an antiferromagnetic coupling between the two modes, which provides an unconventional explanation of the experimental observations in the cuprate. In particular, we also discuss an instability towards an incommensurate magnetic order in this theoretical framework.

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arXiv2023

Hubbard Model on Triangular Lattice: Role of Charge Fluctuations

A chiral spin liquid (CSL) phase has been recently reported in the Hubbard model on a triangular lattice at half-filling. It emerges in an intermediate coupling regime, which is sandwiched between a $120^\circ$ antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase and a metallic phase as a function of on-site repulsion $U$. In this work, we examine how the charge fluctuation may cause the CSL and complex phase diagram. We first identify an exact sign structure of the model at arbitrary temperature, sample size, and doping, which is reduced from the original Fermi exchange signs of the electrons by finite $U$. In particular, the spin and charge degrees of freedom are generally entangled via the phase-string in the sign structure. By precisely switching off such a phase-string, the CSL phase is shown to disappear, with only the $120^\circ$ AFM order remaining down to weak $U$ by a density matrix renormalization group calculation. Here the charge fluctuation is effectively decoupled from the AFM background, which is a $120^\circ$ AFM order due to a geometric Berry phase in the sign structure of the triangular lattice. General implications for the Mott physics will also be discussed.

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arXiv2023

Continuous transition from a Landau quasiparticle to a neutral spinon

We examine a wavefunction ansatz in which a doped hole can experience a quantum transition from a charge $+e$ Landau quasiparticle to a neutral spinon as a function of the underlying spin-spin correlation. As shown variationally, such a wavefunction accurately captures all the essential features revealed by exact diagonalization and density matrix renormalization group simulations in a two-leg $t$-$J$ ladder. Hence its analytic form can provide an explicit understanding of the mechanism for the unconventional ground state. The transition in the phase diagram is accompanied by a change of the hole composite from a tight charge-spin binding to a loosely-bound hole-spin pair. In the latter, the hole carries a \emph{finite} spin current but with vanishing charge current in the degenerate ground states. We show that the charge of the hole composite here is dynamically diminished due to an internal relative hole-spin motion, which is fundamentally distinct from a simple charge-spin separation in a one-dimensional case. We further show that the same effect is also responsible for a strong pairing between two doped holes in such a non-Landau quasiparticle regime.

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arXiv2022

Pair density wave characterized by a hidden string order parameter

A composite pairing structure of superconducting state is revealed by density matrix renormalization group study in a two-leg $t$-$J$ model. The pairing order parameter is composed of a pairing amplitude and a phase factor, in which the latter explicitly depends on the spin background with an analytic form identified in the anisotropic limit as the interchain hopping integral $t_{\perp}\rightarrow 0$. Such a string-like phase factor is responsible for a pair density wave (PDW) induced by spin polarization with a wavevector $Q_{\mathrm {PDW}}=2πm$ ($m$ the magnetization). By contrast, the pairing amplitude remains smooth, unchanged by the PDW. In particular, a local spin polarization can give rise to a sign change of the order parameter across the local defect. Unlike in an Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state, the nonlocal phase factor here plays a role as the new order parameter characterizing the PDW, whose origin can be traced back to the essential sign structure of the doped Mott insulator.

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